by Brian Lumley
'So,' said Maglore. 'It is Magda. You were the one.'
She glared at Nathan and faced up to Maglore, determined to brazen it out. 'But he's one of yours, master, which you have brought into Runemanse. I thought to have him before the others, that's all, and he gave me the opportunity by asking me the way to his room. But as it happens, he's one of three things: a eunuch, or queer, or a child who still thinks it's for pissing! Me: I like a man with backbone. And so no harm done. Besides which, I had no instructions to the contrary.'
'Perhaps not, at the time,' said Maglore nodding, chucking her under the chin almost affectionately.
She rubbed against him and brushed his shoulder with her cheek. Then I have not offended?'
Maglore had been half-smiling. Now the mask slipped from his face and he called for one of his men. At the sound of his voice, a silence fell on the great hall. Then a lieutenant came striding, and Magda tried to back away. But Maglore held her.
Nathan glanced around the great hall. Nearby, a squad of pallid thralls gouged with heavy flint chisels at a wall of pumice; but work stopped as gaunt, hollow faces turned inwards on the drama. Feral eyes lit with morbid fascination, and perhaps with something of grim anticipation, too. A small group of women, pounding washing at a trickling water sluice, looked up and nudged each other, and grinned. They were drudges, most of them, older than Magda and perhaps jealous of her.
Maglore saw that, too. 'Did you wager for him?' he asked her as his lieutenant approached.
'We drew straws,' she snarled, still struggling. 'And I won.'
'Fool!' Maglore told her. 'You lost! Where orders exist you obey them, and where there are none you do nothing. That is the rule, in Runemanse. The others know that, and so they let you win. They were baiting you, trying Nathan, and testing… me!'
He tossed her into his man's arms, grew taller and glowered all about the cavern. 'Testing me?' he shouted, his face livid with a fire which seemed to burn through the very bone. 'Well, and let this be a lesson to all of you. I need not say more than this…' He glanced at his lieutenant, and twitched his head in a negligent gesture: '… Magda is for the provisioning!'
The girl screamed once and clawed for the lieutenant's eyes; he jerked back his head, struck her with a massive fist that broke her jaw and knocked her senseless. And the last Nathan saw of her, she was being carried away.
For a moment the silence seemed to ring… then Maglore headed for the spiral staircase with Nathan following on. But this time he knew better than to plead for the girl, for the Seer Lord's mind was seething like a cauldron full of poison. And as they climbed the central stairs, slowly the great hall came back to life behind them…
At Maglore's table, Nathan had no appetite. He picked at his food when the Wamphyri Lord insisted, but his spirit felt so weighted, depressed, that the morsels would not go down. And he wondered about Magda. Perhaps he'd left his mind unguarded; in any case he was jolted and learned a lesson from it, when Maglore said:
'Forget about her. You won't see her again. And anyway, why concern yourself about someone who would have drained you in a trice?'
'Because I feel it was my fault, master.'
'It was no one's fault. It was Nature's fault: the nature of the vampire. But I am glad you refused her. So should you be glad, for your continued existence.'
'Everything in Runemanse appears a threat,' Nathan answered before he could control his thoughts or words. 'There's no innocence here.'
'Well, there is now,' Maglore contradicted him. 'Aye, and there was before. Perhaps not entirely innocent, but certainly human. Didn't I tell you that you weren't the first human being to stay in Runemanse? If I let my… ladies see you and she together, then perhaps they'll leave you alone. I have sent for her and she will join us in a little while.'
'She, master?'
Maglore waved a dismissive hand. 'Ask no more. Now I have questions for you. For instance: you say you don't know women, yet wore a locket with a curl of pubic hair. And Thyre hair at that! Explain it, if you will.'
Nathan shrugged. 'It's a custom of the Thyre when brother and sister part. Atwei was like a sister to me.'
'And how did you know her so well?'
'I got to know her, in my long wanderings in the desert.'
'Ah, yes, I remember,' Maglore nodded. 'You told me about that on our way here. After Wratha and her renegades fell upon your tribe and destroyed it, you walked out into the desert to die. But the Thyre found you and you joined them, and wandered east with them from oasis to oasis. You skirted the Great Red Waste and lived like the desert trogs themselves, on the flesh of lizards and the juice of cactus plants.' Maglore blinked and shook his head. 'So much sunlight and so little colour. Why did you not burn?'
'I wore a cowled Thyre robe,' Nathan lied, 'and kept to the shade wherever possible. Then, when I came to Turgosheim's Sunside, I lived on the fringe of the forest a while before I heard of lozel and sought him out. In the forest's shade, my skin grew pale… which in any case had never been dark.'
'Why did you seek lozel out?' Maglore's questions were coming closer to the mark. Nathan must think fast, and guard his thoughts at the same time.
'I heard he was a mystic who understood strange things. Perhaps he could explain the numbers which plague my dreams, and the reason I feel like a stranger in the presence of my own kind.' He tugged at the twisted strap on his wrist. 'He might also know why I wear this, which has become a part of me.'
'Ah!' Maglore was distracted, fascinated at once, just as Nathan had hoped he would be. 'Take it off. Let me see it again.' Nathan did so, and Maglore picked it up and said: 'So, the sigil puzzles you even as it puzzles me. Why did you not say so?'
'I have lived with it,' Nathan answered. 'I wear it like my hair. Yet while it seems nothing special, I know that it is special, for it is also your sigil. It seemed presumptuous of me to claim it for my own.'
And at last Maglore chuckled. 'Not to say dangerous, eh?'
'That, too,' Nathan answered.
'Well, and we learn more about you all the time,' the Seer Lord nodded, tossing the strap onto the table. 'You're not so naive after all. And did lozel know the sigil? Could he tell you anything about it?'
'Oh, he knew it, master,' said Nathan. 'But did he know about it? — no, nothing. He was a fraud! I myself know more.'
'You do? Explain.'
Nathan took up the strap. 'I have… noticed things. In quieter moments, I have studied this device.'
'A device?' said Maglore, raising a feathery eyebrow. 'Oh, really? Do you think so? Ahhh!'
'How many sides has it?'
'Eh? A question?' Maglore leaned over the table and tested the leather between thumb and forefinger. 'Sides? Why, two, of course.'
'One,' Nathan shook his head. 'For it defies the eye, do you see?' He brought a sliver of charcoal from the fireplace and drew a line on the brown leather, down the centre of its width. As the line lengthened he turned the strap on the table, until the head of the line met up with its tail.
'Ahhh.'' Maglore's great jaw fell open.
And Nathan asked him: 'How many edges has it?'
'Eh? Edges?' Maglore's eyes darted from the strap to Nathan's face and back again. 'Why, two, plainly. What is it but a strip of leather, after all? There must be two edges, if only to separate the space between them!'
'One,' Nathan said again.
'No!' said Maglore, astonished. 'Let me try it!' He blackened the strap's rim with charcoal, until 'each' edge (in fact there was only one, as Nathan had pointed out) was smudged with soot. Then… the Seer Mage's eyes were very wide as he carefully put the strap down. And:
'For all of sixteen years I have known this thing,' he said, 'even taking it for my sigil. Yet I have never "known" it! But now, through you…" He gazed at Nathan in something approaching wonder. 'Well, in alerting me to your presence, lozel Kotys has paid his dues at last. For indeed there is this bond between us.'
He might have gone on to say more, ex
cept that was when 'she' arrived…
II She was beautiful in a wan, subdued sort of way, but it was obvious that she was not a vampire. Her eyes were as black as any Szgany eyes Nathan had ever seen, and despite the lack of sunlight — or perhaps because of it — her flesh had taken on a unique creamy texture. No longer the tanned, natural, light golden brown of a Gypsy, still her colour appeared healthier than Nathan's, and it could never be mistaken for the pallor of a thrall or the sickly grey of an undead vampire thing.
Long-legged and dressed in a black sheath split up the sides to mid-thigh, and in a gauzy blouse which scarcely concealed the elastic globes of her breasts, she approached the table and bowed from the waist. Her hair, straight, black as jet, and cut in a fringe over her eyes, was long at the sides and fell forward to frame her oval face. But as she straightened her back and stood tall, waiting for her master's command, her eyes were only for Maglore. So that Nathan supposed she dared not look at him, not in the presence of her Wamphyri Lord.
'Orlea,' Maglore acknowledged her presence with a smile, indicating that she should take a seat at the table. 'Eat with us.' And, as she sat down: This is Nathan, and you shall know him well. He is new here and Runemanse is very strange to him. I shall require you to show him all of its levels, rooms, and functions. Nowhere shall be forbidden. He shall be as you are, a free person — within those limits which I impose.'
While Maglore placed some choice tidbits on a plate and passed it to her, Orlea glanced at Nathan, perhaps curiously. Then, lowering her eyes, she picked at her food.
Nathan thought it might be as well to make conversation. 'Despite my colouring,' he spoke to Orlea, 'I am Szgany. But I came here out of the west, from beyond the Great Red Waste.' Perhaps she, and Maglore too, would take it that there were other anomalies of pigmentation in those distant regions. In any case, it was an opening.
She looked at Maglore for his approval, and he nodded. And turning a little more towards Nathan, she asked: 'How is it now, on Sunside?' Her voice was soft, pleasant, but completely lacking in animation; and never a smile to betray her emotions. In fact she seemed drained of all emotion. Nathan could well understand that.
'My Sunside, in the west, or yours?'
'My own,' she answered.
'Do you miss it?' Maybe he was taking a chance. Perhaps she would also take a chance, and answer him truthfully. But she didn't, or so he believed at that time.
'No,' she said. 'My life was hard there.'
Then why do you ask after it?'
Maglore interrupted. 'Good! And so you'll converse and find things in common. But I suspect my presence inhibits you, and anyway I have things to do. Orlea, first I would speak to you…" He stood up and moved apart; she went to him and they talked a while in lowered tones; finally Maglore left the two on their own and went about his business.
As they made an end of their meal, Nathan looked at the spread table. 'What about these things?'
'Just as you and I have our duties here, so others have theirs,' Orlea answered him. She indicated the table. 'All of this will be attended to; but for now Maglore has tasked me to show you Runemanse, and tasked you to observe closely and remember the things you see. No great difficulty in that; I know you will remember, just as I remembered in my time. Indeed, I cannot forget.'
He followed her to a room with a staircase, which they climbed to Runemanse's highest level. 'The topmost fang of the aerie,' she told him without looking back. 'We'll start there, and work our way down.'
'Why did you ask after Sunside?' Nathan was curious.
'Because you were making conversation,' she answered. 'If I had not answered, Maglore would have made me. He admires that such as you and I are civil towards each other. It pleases him that within the limits he imposes we govern our own bodies and minds, and that we temper ourselves and are matched on an emotional level — unlike vampires, who are commanded by powerful, alien urges to argue and fight at every opportunity, often for the sake of it!'
'Is that the only reason?' They had arrived at the topmost landing.
'No, for it was also my thought to ask… after the children.' She waited for him to step up beside her.
The children?'
'My life on Sunside was hard,' she said, 'but I remember the little ones. They were sweet, pure, innocent.'
Nathan shrugged. 'All young things are.'
'Ah, no!' she answered with a small shudder. The young of the Wamphyri are not…'
'And are there young ones here?'
'In Runemanse? No. Maglore cannot abide them. But when I asked him once for a child, he showed me the nurseries of the Wamphyri. The children of Sunside take milk from their mothers or wet-nurses, but in Turgosheim.. they take other than milk. If Maglore could be sure he would father other than a vampire, then he might give me my child, but until then he won't spoil me for the sake of "some usurper brat!'"
'You asked Maglore for a child?' Nathan couldn't believe it. 'Do you mean… you wanted to bear his child?'
'Yes,' she answered, leading the way through a labyrinth of empty rooms to one with a window and, set back in an alcove, a curtained area. There, for the first time, she looked Nathan full in the face. But her chin was raised and her eyes defiant. 'You have not seen Maglore when he's young. You're not a woman. You do not know what it is to be with a vampire Lord. You have no understanding of the word "fulfilment".'
'No,' Nathan replied, drawing back from her. 'But I have seen what remains after women have been… fulfilled! And if they're not dead, they're doomed!'
She nodded, looked away. 'Yes, you are right. But with me… Maglore has been careful, and gentle. I am not changed. Or if I am, it is that I hated him and now love him. A woman can be in thrall to a man in more ways than one.'
'You actually love him?' It seemed impossible.
'I love Maglore!' she snapped. 'Not his works or the thing inside him, but him!'
It was beyond understanding. For a moment, lost for words, Nathan shook his head. Then he said: 'But surely, it's his vampire that makes him what he is?'
'And that is the paradox,' she answered, 'which tears me like rotten cloth. I hate that thing inside Maglore as much as I love its host! For where he is my master, it is his master! And I am jealous of it and hate it because it shares him with me. Also, it shares me with him! But when he is with me in the guise of a young man, then I cannot help but love him.'
Nathan had backed up to the curtained alcove; Orlea had followed and was standing close to him, with her hand on the curtain rope, when he said, 'I think… that I pity you!' He spoke before considering his words, perhaps without even meaning them; for he had no way of knowing what her life had been like before Runemanse. It was simply an expression of his horror. But whatever else she'd lost, Orlea still had her pride. Her dark eyes blazed as she told him:
'Save your pity for yourself, Nathan, for you've not yet seen Runemanse.' With which she pulled the rope. The curtains swished open, and Nathan saw… Maglore's siphoneer. At first he did not recognize what he was looking at, but then he did, and staggered away grimacing and gasping.
'So you see,' she let the curtains fall and followed him, taking his arm to steady him, 'there are times when it's useful to have someone to love and cling to in a place like this. Aye, even a thing like Maglore.' Looking into her eyes, Nathan saw nothing of the feral yellow of a thrall's evil intelligence, or the scarlet of tumultuous Wamphyri passions. But perhaps he did see something of the vacancy of madness…
Next on her list, Orlea showed Nathan Maglore's study or 'room of meditation', to which only a few trusted thralls had access. His eyes were drawn at once to a heavy golden model of the Seer Lord's sigil upon a slender onyx base, and he wondered at its use; or perhaps it was merely ornamental. And seated for long hours before a marvellous model of Turgosheim, he absorbed what Orlea told him of the vampire gorge. This was a great deal more than he'd learned from Nicolae Seersthrall, and went a long way towards completing his knowledge of the geography
of the place and the history of its inhabitants. More than two-thirds of Sundown had passed by the time they were finished there.
'Are you tired?' she asked him. 'Or do you wish to continue?'
'I don't know if I am tired,' Nathan answered truthfully. There's so much to see, learn. And what I've seen already will keep me awake, I'm sure. Anyway, I need to be fatigued in body as well as mind, to sleep soundly.' But inside he knew that he really should sleep, and do as much of it as possible, at every opportunity. For if he should allow himself to become overtired, sooner or later he would let his guard down. His secret talents must remain secret; his knowledge of the Thyre and their desert places was a trust he could never break; he must see about the fabrication of a false geography and lifestyle for that olden Sunside in the west, which he'd left so far behind. For eventually Maglore would want to know about it, he was sure.
'Now would be a good time for sleeping,' Orlea told him as if reading his thoughts, though in fact she had not, for he kept them guarded and could sense nothing of telepathy in her. 'For the deep sleep which you require, if you'd stay strong in Runemanse. Fear saps your strength here — everyone's strength, except Maglore's. One's nerves are stretched to breaking point; breathing and heartbeat fluctuate; will withers to a husk, even as Maglore's grows stronger. For it's not only blood that vampires suck, Nathan. They suck everything.'
He followed her back down to the great hall, where there was little of activity now. Several female thralls were still out and about, however, and a group of them stood in secretive conversation. Seeing Nathan and Orlea together they fell silent, frowning, and apparently frustrated. Then, when he would have made for his room, Orlea took his elbow and guided him in a different direction, down a passageway carved in pumice.
'Where are we going?' Nathan inquired.
'To a place where those women won't bother you,' she told him. 'For they fear me almost as much as they fear Maglore.'
'And where is the Seer Lord now?' He felt uneasy, but was not quite sure why he wanted to know.
